Posts
In it, I have links to nearly twenty blogs kept by my friends and associates here in Chicago. If you are reading this and you keep a blog, odds are very good that I read it and the URL for it is here in my file.
It's the first thing that I check in the morning when I get up, after email and before teeth brushing. I scroll through every link, checking up on folks.
It's the last thing that I look at before I go to bed at night. (After email and before teeth brushing, actually.)
And if there's down time at work and my email and the Bee Board aren't keeping me hopping, I take a quick stroll through a similar file on my work computer and check in on folks.
I read everything.
Well, everything new.
And if a person catches my interest with a clever entry title in the past, I'll read that too. I try to give my entries clever titles for the same reason. (Although, if I REALLY wanted to trick people into reading them, I'd go back and change them all to read, "Amazing Blowjob Story #1", "Amazing Blowjob Story #2" and so on. Nothing captures a blog readers interest like Sex. Well, sex and seeing themselves mentioned. Those are the big two.)
I think these people and how they choose to express themselves is fascinating. I get everything from true tales of childhood memories, to keen personal observation. Some very finely polished poetry. (Actually, most of the poetry that my friends attempt is more polished than they likely know. The thing about poetry that makes it work is having the courage to give it a try. After that, BOOM, it's a poem. I don't think I've ever read a "bad" poem. I've read ones that didn't speak to me. Or ones that got too mired down in language that it wasn't accessible to me anymore. But my friends, well, they speak from the heart and knowing them makes their poems all that much smarter and more endearing. In short, I occasionally read some very finely polished poetry.)
A guy a barely know, Arnie, keeps a fine, fine blog over on "A Year After the Breakup". You can find a link to it on the homepage of my blog. It's sublime. The picture compositions are frequently zenlike in their clarity. I am a fan of his photography. I swear I'd buy some of them a framed art for my apartment. It makes me want to get a camera and try it, myself. And the entries that accompany the pictures are usually smart and brief. I wish I wrote as well as he does. On a daily basis.
That's sort of what I'm talking about here. I barely know that guy and yet, by reading his blog, I know what his friends look like and what they do socially. How they interact with each other and other intimate details of his life.
He is compelled to keep that blog for whom? For his ex? For himself? For me? Who knows?
And yet, he does it daily. With a consistency that's amazing.
My theory about why he does it and why I do it and why you do it (if you do it) is because these are our mortal thoughts and by recording them, we prove that we existed. Birthed into existence by our frantic, monkey minds. These are our reflections and opinions. They are how we view the world. Direct, mainline entry ports into our souls and we record them as a defiant way of marking our existences. We live lives that don't mark us as someone "important" or "special" or "celebrity" and yet, here is a forum where we are interviewed and listened to and heeded. In the way that every human being needs to be heeded.
That's why we do it. To prove that we continue forward. And that we're here right now. And later, when we look back on this, to show where we were at one point.
And thank god for the technology that records my thoughts, transferred through my lightning fast, tappa tappa tappa fingertips and archived here for later viewing. By me. And by you. The Anonymous Reader.
An alternative theory that I've heard other people espouse, say that blogs are a form of public masturbation. Or maybe auto-fellatio is more accurate.
I don't know. That sounds a bit cynical to me. Like the stubborn mumblings of people on the sides of the prom dance floor, saying that "dancing is for fags, anyways". How do you know if you aren't out there, shaking you ass, fellas? The people commenting bitterly from the sidelines are invisible to the people out there on the dance floor. You're moving too fast to track people who aren't moving at all.
Maybe it's both.
I guess the difference is in how much you trust the author and his intentions. If you like him, it's a worthwhile endeavor. If you don't, then it's just him wanking himself off. Intention is key.
Either way, a good friend of mine, Joe, has entered his first blog entry ever over on MySpace. And I couldn't be happier for him. I couldn't be more proud of him. He's not an academic. He has no literary ambitions, but he has made a mark and said, "I'm here. I matter. This is what I've experienced and it's worth the time it took me to type it out." I have to support a definitive creative gesture like that.
He has, with that one entry, earned himself a link in my "Blog" file.
Well done, Joe.
Mr. B
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